


The Red Deeps

by Trixen



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixen/pseuds/Trixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A violent, hot longing. In a changed world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Pet,  
  
Hope this bit of paper and words finds you well and thriving – oh sod it, I can’t do the pleasantries, if that’s all right by you. I don’t have much time, or peace for that matter, and its best that I get on with the information. I know that’s what you want. I’ve traveled far since my last letter, and seen more than I’d care to, to be honest. Always thought I had the monopoly on horror, but I’ve been wrong.   
  
Malta is hell. Much too hot for December. So hot, that my skin sizzles even at night and I smell like burnt toast in the mornings. From sunrise ‘til sundown, insects bother the others, but they don’t bother me. They’ve always smelled my deadness. The traveler’s complex is made up mostly of runaways, scaredy-cats and the lot. One woman is faerie—I saw her washing up and there were thin skinned wings under her dress, and her eyes glow in the right light. I haven’t talked to her yet; wanna lay low til I find out more about her. I’ll probably move on before I can say a few words, but that’s the way it seems to go. There’s a mish-mash of people, and they get crawled on and swarmed by beetles and cockroaches and all those black, slimy things, and I sit outside, trying to find some air that doesn’t feel as if it was boiled in Hell.   
  
Our mud huts are set high in the hills, and the sky is red when I go down each night to survey the camps. A few women staff the traveler’s complex (one was murdered last week – tortured – but they don’t think she said anything – her body washed up, and they’d severed her vocal cords – punishment?) and they bring skins of water from the river and try to make our beds comfortable with grass and hay. I drink my pig’s blood that tastes of brine and I smoke my cheap cigarettes (RB’s does well even out here) and I write poetry that is too terrible to share, too terrible to contemplate. William the Bloody Awful Poet. I can laugh at that name now – cos what else is there to laugh at? I read my books. I try not to remember. I think I’ve become too soft in my old age and soul.  
  
The camps here are built with white stone. Low buildings, with no windows. Reinforced to keep out the sun. Only one entrance, back way. Fencing that looks deceptively flimsy in places – bait, perhaps, or maybe they’ve gone shoddy in their workmanship. The research palaces are around front – I’ve seen the lab coats entering and exiting. In the middle are the prisoners. Stinks of misery round those buildings. They’ve put them to work, as far as I can tell – doing what I can’t be sure. Blood crops? It reeks of plastic blood and there are long stemmed plants sticking straight up from the center courtyard. Might be one for the Watcher. See if he can’t find out if they could be manufacturing blood. Don’t have to tell ya how bad that’d be. They’re still making weapons. Predictable wankers. I spotted a steel mill on my way down last night – big plumes of smoke and the smell of sulphur.   
  
Talk in the town center is of food and drink and shagging, but they do mention things that make my ears prick up and often I think I hear tell of your friends, of the other lost ones. There are whispers of a ‘doncella oscuro’ in Spain, and here she is the ‘mudlam’. I believe these words mean ‘dark one’ or ‘dark maiden’. Faith? Fuck knows, but I’m trying to learn more. Rumor is that she joined a remote sect known only as the ‘Bloodlings’. No one can tell much about them. Layer after layer of underworld – makes me tired just thinking about it. As for the Witch and the Boy, I can’t say. Your friends are sought after and I’d have my lovely head on the butcher’s block if they knew what I know. I’m still searching so don’t get those bright red knickers in a twist. Not everything’s buggered to Hell.   
  
Not quite anyway.  
  
Keep your chin up, Goldilocks, and the home fires burning. I’ll be in Wales drinking with the bloody Taffs in a year or so, so same time, same place?   
  
S_  
  
 _PS: What are you reading? The proprietress, Tanis, gave me an old stained book of poetry and I’ve been reading it, like mad bad Byron, thinking of you. This bit reminded me of---_  
  
There is blood. I look up from Spike’s letter, feeling the familiarity of it – like a tear, stinging. Hot on my thigh. Setting down the piece of paper, I look around aimlessly for a tampon, before I remember that Reedy’s Bazaar sold out this week. Color me shocked. Reaching down into one of the bottom drawers of my desk, I root around in its earthly depths with inky fingers. The space smells of old tarp and paper cuts. I draw out cloth napkins, see the brown stains of months past. Unbuttoning my pants, I line my underwear carefully, ignoring the warm, stringy blood, the evidence of my womb.   
  
I pick up Spike’s letter again.   
  
_desire.  
  
I wish I were close  
To you as the wet skirt of  
A salt girl to her body.  
I think of you always._  
  
A smile steals my mouth. He still tries, after all these years. We all do, I guess. In our own ways, try to pretend things haven’t changed. Spike slips into William’s skin, quoting poetry and flirting as best he can. Sometimes, I drag my red leather pants out and let them fit me like the skin on a grape. Giles calls me each day from the wild nowhere, and I can hear him shuffling through books and drinking murky tea, the very epitome of a serious, studious Watcher. Even through chaos and bedlam. And while Dawn is now nineteen and fierce, at times she will still whine and twirl her hair and act like a child, even though she knows that childish things have been put away forever.   
  
I’m itchy and restless from reading too many reports and letters from far off places. I squeeze out from behind my desk. It is set against the far wall of my office, next to the grotesquely fat window. Gazing out for a moment, I see the black streets of London – clogged, wind-swept, the heads close together to ward off the snow. The sky is white, swirly. I’m shivering, what a cliché. The thin, cold girl. I think about wrapping myself in a blanket, calling my Mom, getting lost in a fantasy and letting the phone ring and ring. Instead, I make a circle around the shelves, touching the many gifts I’ve gotten over the last three years, since the veils split and the dragon ate Los Angeles.  
  
“Very Rain of Frog-y,” I murmur, echoing Xander’s first words at the news.   
  
My fingers drift over the Mani wheel I received from a spiritual leader in Tibet, but I don’t touch the spindle. My prayers are better left unsaid, to be honest. I’ve never wanted to be Depresso Girl, and my prayers are just filled with too much grief. I palm the warm, reassuring jars of Angelica root, opening one so that I can inhale the faint, green scent of gin and flowers. A Germanic Gandhi-type gave me a set of runes for casting protection spells. He left a small note attached to them, in a language that I can’t understand. I’ve never gotten anyone to translate it – the strange words scare me enough already.  
  
Less intimidating are the clay pots filled with silver dimes, and my favourite, the vulva amulet, thrust upon me by a well-meaning missionary. I look at the walls, seeing the maps that paper them, the maps of the world. Sometimes I want to tear them down, stomp on them with my four-inch heels, because never has my responsibility been so clear. But other days I welcome them, because they have constructed my house, my time, and given me the path toward action I’ve always liked- _needed_.   
  
I reach up; trace the deep grooves left in the countries, the roads my team have tried to sketch out. We’ve tried to be one step ahead, but it’s harder than it sounds. My eyes pass over the framed photos of my friends, the tokens of good will, the stacks of reports – weaponry camps, food mills, lists upon lists of prisoners of war – the dreary business of running a resistance. It’s all so very romantic and World War II until you actually have to _do_ it.   
  
“We have a new missing person.”  
  
I turn at the sound of the voice and smile. Not at the news, at the person. “Hi Jane.”  
  
He doesn’t return the smile but he inclines his head. He’s holding a thick booklet and he sets it on my desk. “You’re ridiculously cheerful.”  
  
“Letters from the undead will do that.”  
  
“The Platinum God has risen again, huh?”  
  
“Yep.” I walk over and rest one hand on the window pane. But my eyes are unseeing- the streets remain the same. “I didn’t know you came complete with nicknames.”  
  
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he smirks. “Where’s Spike now?”  
  
“Maltese. Or maybe that’s the dog.”  
  
“Malta,” Jane says. “Anything interesting?”  
  
“Nothing of the new,” I reply, feeling weary. “But he did say something about possible blood crops.”  
  
“They could be phasing out humans altogether.”  
  
“Let’s hope not. The longer we’re considered Happy Meals, the longer we’ll last.” I nod to the booklet, itching my forehead, near the warm dampness of my hairline. “What’s the what?”   
  
“The info on the MisPer.”  
  
“Do I really have to look? I’m on word-overload.”   
  
“You have to look. He’s a pilot. I’ve got what’s left of the Council – not to mention the air force – breathing down my neck. I’m not terribly interested in taking the heat for this one, Buffy.” He sees my look and shrugs elegantly. “You _are_ the Slayer. They take disappointment better when it comes from all that history and power and –“  
  
“Can we skip the ‘buttering up’ portion of the program?”  
  
Jane laughs. “Flattery is beneath me.”  
  
“What isn’t?”  
  
“That was low,” he replies. “I happen to choose my partners carefully.”  
  
“By their dick size?”  
  
“That would put you in the running, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“Ha. Ha.” I finally pick up the booklet. It is weighty with responsibility and grief. “Tell me about the pilot.”  
  
“He’s young. Twenty-nine, maybe. Joined up after the first war. He got sent to Africa—had a couple of legal problems. Seems he got into a few fights with his fellow soldiers.”  
  
“A troublemaker.”  
  
Jane shrugs, leans against the wall. The jet of his hair is like blood in the evening light. It matches mine. “I don’t think he was too interested in playing Captain America for the press. Who can blame the guy? He was getting bumped from section to section.” He gets tired of the wall and begins to thumb through the journals on my vast bookshelf. He’s getting closer, and I smell him, stinging tears and sharpness.   
  
“Continue. Time’s-a-wastin’. I want to know what I can do about this.”  
  
He smiles. Flash of teeth. “Right.” Sitting down on the side of my desk, he continues to touch my things. Laying his stamp, his smudge. “You can’t do much, for the record. He moved around quite a bit.”  
  
“Married?”  
  
“No. Not even a girlfriend – but he’s got a best friend, that’s for sure. She’s angry as Hell about his disappearance and I’ve had to listen to how angry she is—a lot. Lots of ranting. She’s a firecracker. I think –“  
  
“Jane. Point. Make one.”  
  
“He moved to Belize – fought in the war there. Most of his team died. They sent him to the Caymans and then he was slated for the moon and finally Mars—but I guess he opted out of the astronaut suit and so they shipped him to Guam. It gets a bit fuzzy from there but he vanished about two days ago—over the Challenger Deep.”  
  
“Refresh my memory.”  
  
“Like you _have_ one,” he smirks. “You slept through history, Buffy. But you remember the Challenger—I know you do. That warship got sucked into it a few months ago. All those missionaries died. It’s the deepest spot on earth – seven miles down and black as Hell. He’s probably dead but I’ve got the military police up my ass- not to mention his friend.”  
  
“You’d probably enjoy that,” I reply absently, leafing through the booklet. Logan Echolls. That name sounds vaguely familiar. “Is he famous?”  
  
“His Daddy was. Some actor.”   
  
“Aaron Echolls! I remember. His wife jumped off a bridge. He killed that girl.”   
  
“All too _Entertainment Tonight_ for me, sugar.” Jane points to the booklet. “Get familiar with that. I’m routing all calls to you.”  
  
“I have enough to deal with.”  
  
“If you have enough time to read Spikey’s letters, you have enough time to deal with this. I really, really don’t. Should I remind you that I’m handling all your friends’ cases—“  
  
“You wouldn’t be so much reminding as you would be guilt-tripping—“  
  
“And I’ve got the dignitaries arriving in Belfast this week, which means I have to take the train, which means I’ll be shitting myself all the way down there – not to mention that we’ve got the field mission going into the –“  
  
“I get. You’ve made your point.” My voice is dry, but tired. I feel it scratching slightly; a record player off its loop. “Leave it with me and I’ll see what actiony things I can do for him. Would you get me some tea, though?”  
  
“Sure thing,” Jane smiles. His lips are pink and slightly chapped. He is always happy once he has gotten his way.   
  
I am still cold, and so I pick up the ratty black sweater from the hook behind my desk. Drawing it around my shoulders, I sit down again, curling my legs beneath me. My body folds up like a baby’s, pliable and elastic. The booklet is thick with papers and pictures. There is more information in it then we usually have for MisPers and I’m grateful for that, at least. Small mercies are all we can hope for.   
  
I open it carefully and stare at the photograph of the boy everyone is searching for. Worrying the gilt chain around my neck, I decide that he has an interesting face, and bad-boy eyes, and that he’s probably dead. Boys that devastating always die young.  
  
I murmur a thank you when Jane brings me my tea. It is amber and hot, sweetened with black cherries. I taste their pulp against my teeth and remember in a slow, deep rush where I know the name from. Logan Echolls.   
  
He’s Veronica’s.   
  
Turning, I stare out at the wings of snow, beating against my window. Veronica, Veronica. The name echoes, drums, and my hair falls across my cheek like a black slash. My fingers stray again to my neck, to the gilt chain, and I think of her eyes, burning burning. 


	2. Chapter 2

Around one o’clock in the morning, London is still wind-swept and starry, and thrumming with cold, cold snow. I’ve left my desk-chair for the window-seat. A wool blanket is wrapped around my knees, which look knobby and ineffectual. I press my nose against the glass of the window. The streets are empty, softened and blurred with winter. A frozen landscape, broken only by watery street lamps and black buildings, white windows like elephant tusks. It looks briefly, sharply, like Los Angeles.  
  
My grief quickens and swells and I feel as if it is a _thing_ in the room, snuffling from the corner, threatening to crawl over and let me smell the blood on its breath. It is always, always baying at the door and it reminds me of those old days when I used to see Mom on every couch, crying on every couch, her mouth open with sobs. It reminds me of Acathla’s tunnel and Glory’s steel castle and the smell of my burned hand after I left Spike to the ash and I hurt, I do hurt. No one else remembers, really.   
  
I’ve gotten up once in the past four hours, to change my makeshift Maxi, feeling vaguely angry that my body just keeps _going_ \- despite the fact that sometimes all I wish for is the red velvet of an unassuming sleep. There are just too many things crowding in my brain – dark, squat things – and I can’t make room for them all. Friends to save, trains to blow to kingdom come, vampires to pierce, apples to eat – I can’t forget to eat – and in all the noisiness, at times I forget my name.   
  
I shake my head, letting the thoughts get chased away. The room is normal-shaped now, no lurking creatures. I think about pressing my nose against the steam of my breath, and I think about tracing my name, but it seems silly. So adolescent and it’s been a long time since I felt that way.  
  
But I give in. I breathe on the glass of the window. The steam forms the shape of a blood clot. I write my name in looping script – Buffy. The back of my throat burns and I think how nice it would be to laugh wetly and drink irresponsibly and fuck until my body was spent but its already a little bit spent. Just a little.   
  
Cramps begin to bloom in my stomach but I ignore them, glancing down at the papers spread over the window seat, next to the delicate skin of my legs. I’ve made a cheat-sheet about Logan Echolls, but its basically hearsay, depending on whom you ask. I look it over, the snarled, messy writing, trying to understand something of the man behind the words.   
  
  
1\. 28 years old, single, lives out of a suitcase but has an apartment in west London, provided by the military  
2\. was engaged to Hannah Griffith at the age of 22, called it off for reasons of the unknown variety (she is now captive at Aeneid Camp, CA)  
3\. Best friend and ex-lover of Veronica Mars, spygirl and pain in the ass  
4\. inherited millions of dollars from his family – donated most of it to war efforts  
5\. Grew up under the iron fist of Aaron Echolls, murderer of Lilly Kane (Veronica’s best friend at the time) and executed by unknown person  
6\. Mother committed suicide over the Coronado Bridge (body never found but she still pulls an Elvis and resurfaces every so often in the National Enquirer)  
7\. Logan joined the air force during the Caspian Wars – lost most of his fellow pilots in the bombings and came close to drowning in the Caspian Sea. Moved from Russia to Africa to train new recruits at Base Camp Kenya   
8\. Shuffled a bit from place to place – unknown history for a year or two (possible connections to disappearance? find out what he did)  
9\. Fought in the Belize Wars, his team all died and then he was sent to the Caymans for additional training  
10\. Opted out of the space program for reasons unknown (usually thought of as a lifeline?)  
11\. Shipped to Guam to fight in the Marianas War  
12\. Disappeared over the Challenger Deep – November 28th, 2017 (not amidst fighting of any kind – he was allegedly training when whatever it is that happened, happened)  
13\. Search effort—  
  
“How’s the work coming?”  
  
I smell the deep amber hot of tea and smile gratefully, wearily. “It’s coming.” Looking up, I stretch a bit and accept the tray from his hands, placing it flat on my lap. “Slow though.” I pause. “He’s probably dead.”  
  
“I know.” Jane sits down across from me, taking a cup from the tray. “That’s almost certain. But he’s their poster pilot – they won’t rest till we give them firm answers.”  
  
“We?” I echo.  
  
“Well, you,” he says unabashedly. “But we’ll present it as a joint effort.”  
  
“Naturally.” The tea tastes of black cherries and its so familiar, sitting here with him, with the snow ravishing the outside world, my friends vanished, a pilot drowned, memories itching for space. Its so familiar. My fingers touch the chain around my neck, roll it a little, feel its weight. “So, you have dire face. Are you worried about Belfast?”  
  
“I hate the train,” he says simply. “You know that. I hate mingling. I much prefer to be cooped up in my office with papers and pigeons.”  
  
“Liar. _I_ always end up feeding your pigeons when you head to the bar every single night.” I smile. “You’re always partying like its—well, I guess it _is_ the end of the world…”  
  
“That’s not mingling. Its cruising.” He laughs and drinks from the tea until it stains his lips pink. “Its too snowy out there for much of anything. The tracks’ll be slippery. Remember when we almost rolled over that bridge in Siberia? You would’ve had to slay a whole bunch of Fangies.” He looks depressed. “If this train breaks down, I’ll be food for sure.”  
  
“You have magic, and protection and it won’t break down anyway,” I soothe. “Haven’t I passed some of my mad Slayer skills down to you—“  
  
“Please don’t ever use the term ‘mad Slayer skills’ again, Buffy,” he says, looking ill.  
  
“But Dawn says I’m starting to sound old.”  
  
“You’re in your thirties. Embrace it,” Jane replies. “As for Echolls – try to get a report out by the weekend and we’ll call it a day. They can’t ask for anything more. The only thing that might be difficult is getting his friend off our backs—“  
  
My breath hitches ever so slightly. “Veronica.”  
  
“You know her?”  
  
I shake my head. A hot tightness starts in my chest, right behind my breastbone. “No. Well, yes. Sort of. Her father is Keith Mars.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“The missing Sheriff—“  
  
“I know, but I mean—what do you have to do with that?”  
  
“I helped her in the beginning—when he was taken. We tried to find him. But as per the usual, we couldn’t. Veronica—she didn’t take the news well. She works for both sides. Like Bert Arnold—“  
  
“Benedict Arnold.”  
  
“Whatever. She’s tricky. The Council ignores the stuff she does—I try to know what she’s up to, just so she doesn’t wreak too much in the way of havoc. But if she’s looking for Logan, she’ll expect to find him post haste-y. I can guarantee that. She won’t give up.”  
  
“Hmmm. Sounds like you. Does she work for the Shedu or just the Samael?”  
  
“Equal opportunity.”  
  
“Bad.”  
  
“The baddest,” I agree. “I just can’t—I know she’s looking for her Dad and I understand that, but she can’t go working for the demonic crowd and expect me to—and the worst part is that she still does favors for the Council in exchange for information. I know they’ll think she had something to do with Logan’s disappearance but there’s no way that she did.”  
  
“How do you know? Did you bang her or something?”  
  
I flush. “You’re a pig.”  
  
“Just checking, Princess.”   
  
“They were best friends. Maybe they were fucking, I don’t know.” The language slips easily from my mouth, as it never used to when I was younger, fresher. I was a blank sheet of linen when it came right down to it. Sometimes I think I don’t envy that girl anymore, or maybe that’s just another form of denial. “I think they used to lovey-dovey it before the wars. She wouldn’t do anything to him—I remember how she talked about him. Veronica isn’t that sort of person.”  
  
“You’re very sure.”  
  
“I am.” I ache to stop saying her name, stop feeling the way I do when I say it. Anxious, weak, burning. I sit up straighter, elongating the tired planes of my back. Each construction, each muscle groans under the pressure. I should eat soon – something fibrous, crunchy. Peanut butter. Smooth oiliness. There has to be more food somewhere. “Anything to eat?”  
  
“Apples?”  
  
I’m grouchy. “Could not be any more tired of them.”  
  
“I think I have some bread in my office.” Jane reaches out and touches my face. I almost jerk away from the touch. He feels the flinch and smiles. “Why don’t you go home and eat?”  
  
“I only have dog food.”  
  
“Wrong wrong, love. I left some rations at your place earlier. Feed Familiar and then put the tins away, cos I got you some yummy shit. I promise.”  
  
“Yummy shit. There’s an oxymoron for you.”  
  
“In some circles.” Jane stands, extends his hand for me. “Coming? I’ll walk you home.”  
  
“You think I need protection?”  
  
“No, but I do.” He laughs a little, at our lives, what they’ve been reduced to by these terrible years. “Aren’t you going home? You need to sleep.” He laughs again when I blink at the word. “Lovely girl, get up, let’s walk home and pretend things are normal.” Jane loops his arm around my shoulders, dislodges the papers from my lap as he stands me up and places me firmly on the floor. “You know what you need?”  
  
“A lobotomy?”  
  
“A big bed, a big supper and a good fuck. It cleanses the system.”  
  
“Are you offering?”  
  
“Not really,” he tugs me close and presses a dry kiss to my hairline. “You know I prefer the fairer sex.”  
  
“That’s girls.”  
  
“Not to me.”  
  
“I know. You’re not my type anyway.”  
  
“What is exactly?”  
  
“Nobody knows,” I whisper and walk from the room with him. The locket around my neck is heavy as lead.


	3. Chapter 3

When I arrive home, I am salted with snow and dreaming of the hot Pacific. I feel like Jadis, the White Witch and smile through the frost. Shaking out my hair, I peel off my sweater and scarf. My thin shoulders ache underneath even thinner flesh. “Hello,” I say.  
  
My wolf, Familiar, stares unblinkingly back at me. She is beautiful. As cool and as bright as angels. There is blood on the fur around her mouth so I know she has eaten.   
  
I rescued her after the second London blitz. I stumbled upon her in the alleyway behind the Royal Mint. She smelled of zoo and wounds. She tried to bite my fingers off with her white stripe of teeth, but I subdued her and we’ve been together ever since. She doesn’t trust me, and really, why would she? She knew humans from the zoo, but I am an altogether more alien being. I know she scents the battle on my breath and she wonders.  
  
“Fine, don’t say hi,” I murmur.  
  
I’m naked now, my clothes a silky heap of wet in the front hallway. Padding down the old rough carpet, I pass Familiar and don’t touch her. I never make the first move. Jane lit the fire well in the living area, good boy, and I stretch my arms above my head, luxuriating in the hotsoft of the air. The smell of the hearth fills me, woodsmoke and cedar.   
  
Making my way into the kitchen, I root through the icebox for the treats that Jane promised. There is a wet bushel of broccoli, with dirt still clinging to the stems. A wedge of white cheese sits beside a chunk of hard, sweet bread. There is a polished apple, a satchel of tea, the scent of patchouli and thyme, and best of all, what looks like a bottle of beer. My appetite has fled since I walked home in the frozen city, but my thirst has not. Fishing the bottle of beer from the wreckage, I carry it with me to the bathroom. It bangs against my thigh, a steady, comforting beat.  
  
I tread softly down the hall, toward the bathroom. My apartment is old, willowy. The council pays for it, though I think they would rather I stay in my office or on the field. The walls sag a little, worn from age and water. The floors creak and roll, like the deck of a ship, the paint peels, and when I moved in, each window was caked with dust and dirt from eons past. And yet, it has grown on me, like so much has about this war. There are beautiful things about it. I’ve had to look – but that’s the story of my life anyway.   
  
The bathroom is big and roomy and echoey. There’s a fireplace. My bedroom is full of doves. They roost in the alcoves up high high in the ceiling. My bed is acres wide, oceans across of sheets and blankets and pillows. So yes, I love my apartment, as lonely and as unwelcoming as it might seem. After all, I have a wolf to keep me warm and the smell of woodsmoke in the evenings. What else is there?  
  
Carrying the phone with me to the bathroom, along with the beer, I catch a glimpse of myself in the ancient mirror set above the bath, and flinch. My body is unformed, like a girl’s. I travel down it with my eyes, ruthlessly checking off each imperfection. Jutting, winged collarbones. Slight, soft arms. Teacup breasts. Little hard nipples. Distended belly. Skinny legs. Malnutrition. I no longer look like I used to – there is nothing whipcord about my muscles, no blonde in my hair.   
  
Twisting the tap, I let the water run. It is hot and smells faintly of sulphur. The gunpowder has a habit of getting in everything, even the water supply. Dialing the number with slippery fingers, I listen to the distant rings.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
Relief. Always. “Hey Dawn.”  
  
“Buffy.” She sounds annoyed, but then she does most of the time. Maybe I’ve interrupted her with one of her many boyfriends or girlfriends. My sister has grown fluid with time. “Is everything ok?”  
  
“Fine. Am I interrupting something?”  
  
She sighs throatily. “When aren’t you, Buffy?”  
  
I laugh. “I’m glad one of us is busy.”  
  
“How’s the fight?” she asks.  
  
“Fighty.” Twisting off the tap, I step into the bathtub. It has tiny claw feet and is long and deep. Like a coffin. Submerging myself in the long drink of heat, I wiggle my toes and almost moan with the pleasure. “How’s London?”  
  
“Cold. Gross. Fantastic.” She drawls her words a little now; the war and the confusion have changed her slightly. But I cannot tell how, really, it’s all bled together. “Parties. But they’re starting to get boring. Same people, over and over.” She sounds like she is smoking, more breaths in and out. “New York?”  
  
“The same.”   
  
“You don’t go to parties.” Dawn sounds amused. “And Jane?”  
  
“Still more same-ness.” I pause. “I’m being repeato-girl. I guess we’re a little busy. We have a new case and I have that sneaky feeling it’s going to take up every bit of time from here to eternity.”  
  
“Is it Logan Echolls?”  
  
“How did you—“  
  
“It’s the only thing anyone’s talking about here. He was a _celebrity_ , Buffy. A total hottie too.” She takes another long deep drag of her cigarette and exhales. “Does this mean you’re going to see Veronica?”  
  
I ignore that. “I didn’t know Logan’s popularity extended to London.”  
  
“It extends everywhere. But isn’t it more notoriety?” Dawn laughs. “He was _such_ a rake.”  
  
“A gardening tool?”  
  
“He liked women,” she giggles. “And maybe men too, who knows. It’s that kind of time. Do you think he’s alive? Captured by the Shedu?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“The Samael?”  
  
“Neither. I think he’s dead. The way he disappeared—it’s not conducive to being found in one piece. Multiple pieces, maybe. But this whole search seems like a waste of time—he vanished over the ocean. That leaves little room for survival right there. Unless he found a convenient desert island.”  
  
“That would be very _Lost_ of him,” Dawn observes. “Any plans for deployment to the—where did he go missing again? The Challenger something-or-other? Everybody over here is fuzzy on the details.”  
  
“The Challenger Deep. I thought you said that it was all the rage to gossip about his disappearance.”  
  
“No, it’s all the rage to talk about _him_. Especially his Dad. He killed some rich girl. Bashed her head in.”  
  
“You’re so delicate, Dawnie.”  
  
“I try.” My sister yawns. “So are you seeing Veronica, or not?”  
  
I splash slightly in the water and take a drink of beer. Warm, bubbly swallows. My whole body feels tight and unused. “I don’t know. I suppose I will. She was his best friend.”  
  
“Mmm.”   
  
“What?”  
  
“You should really—“ Dawn stops short for a moment. “Never mind. But it’s wartime, Buffy. Have some fun or something.”  
  
“You’re talking like you’re Nana during World War II,” I reply, irritated.  
  
“Was she a lesbian?"  
  
"Shut up, Dawn."  
  
"Well, _anyway_ , I think you should talk to Veronica. After the way things went before—“  
  
“How would you know?”  
  
“I know.” Her voice goes soft suddenly. “You’re my sister. I know.”  
  
My throat clenches. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all over with anyway.”  
  
“You could take the locket off.”  
  
I go cold. More hot water. The reek of sulphur fills the room as I run more bath, wanting my skin to be covered, encased. “I have to go, Dawn. I’ll call you soon.”  
  
“Don’t you want to hear how the Slayers—“  
  
“I’ll call soon.”  
  
“Buffy—I just love you—“  
  
“I know. We’ll talk soon, I promise.” Clicking ‘off’, I slide back until my hair gets wet and slides over my shoulders like little black snakes. There is a message waiting on the phone. Feeling worn – as worn as the apartment – I press the appropriate buttons, and then wish I hadn’t.  
  
“Buffy—hi. This is—this is Veronica. Veronica Mars. I was hoping to catch you at home. But I guess you’re busy. Who isn’t? Um, I need to talk to you about Logan. I’m sure Jane gave you the case—and I know that I can help. _You_ know I can help. So please call me. I’m staying at the regular place. I _will_ be a part of this. I—well, hopefully you’re doing ok. Bye.”  
  
There is no need for any heat or fire. Everything feels like ash. Familiar sets one paw into the bathroom and I smell wolf, wildness. I set the phone on the floor and slide down, until the room is underwater.


	4. Chapter 4

Vast, running hills of salt. That is what the snow looks like from the window of my office. Great snow-clouds rise from the North, plowing across the sky like ships. It is all the color of tears. I brought Familiar to work with me today, and she sleeps in the corner, on a bed of blankets, blood around her mouth. I can hear her breaths as I stand staring across London, my own breaths soft yet unrelenting.   
  
The Resistance offices are empty. Only one single week has passed since Logan Echolls was reported missing, and yet everyone on my team has already been dispatched across the plains, to do their work and toil. Jane is leaving for Belfast in the morning. Dawn is on pins and needles in London, waiting with her baby Slayers – waiting for my call. Giles is living with his books. The lost ones remain lost. And I am still reading, researching, still doing Willow’s work—there is no greater testament-y thing to do, in the end.  
  
“Are you still asleep?” I whisper to the wolf.  
  
She stirs slightly. One of her yellowish eyes opens but the lid is lazy, irritated.   
  
“Don’t have annoyed face,” I say. Brandishing the pages of careful handwriting – planning – I turn and speak to her. “Don’t you want to hear about all the work I’ve done? Major Willow-age today. I read all about the Challenger Deep and the Marianas Islands _and_ all about Logan Echolls, who, I gotta say, was kind of a tramp.” I pause and regard the wolf, who is staring at me now, muzzle off the blankets. “Listen to this,” I consult the pages in my hands, “Logan was working at a field base on Guam and also dating one of the local girls. She—her name was Kayla -- last saw him on November 21st, when he left her apartment after a night of – well, searing passion, I guess, and she said in her statement that he was heading off on a training schedule that would last through the 27th. So no one really knows what he was doing out flying on the 28th – he wasn’t slated for a mission or anything official. No one can find any clearance records for flight time. He must’ve been—searching for something. I can relate, but he should’ve taken back up, don’t you think? Or at least a rocket launcher.”  
  
Familiar rises easily onto all four paws, and pads quietly in my direction. Her tail is wagging slightly and the tip of her tongue emerges from her mouth. Happy puppy. Well, teenage puppy, I guess. Jane says she’s an adolescent wolf. _This_ would explain the frequent mood swings.   
  
“You’re interested? Color me surprised,” I say affectionately and touch the top of her head. I’m careful. Sometimes my fingers still throb from the gash she left on them that day behind the Royal Mint. “There’s more. Yay for intrigue! Giles is trying to find an insider in Aeneid – oh, I see the quizzical head-tilt – that’s the camp where Logan’s ex is being held. Hannah Griffith. They got together soon after Logan left college and they got engaged super fast – it screamed rebound. Giles thinks she may be part of the mystery but I think she’s just an evil blonde from the past. There’s always an evil blonde.”  
  
“Hannah wasn’t evil. You _really_ need my help if you’re barking up that tree.”  
  
I look up slowly. Familiar’s ears tilt back but she does not growl.   
  
“Veronica.”  
  
“Is that my name? Jane tells me I’m referred to as ‘spygirl’ and ‘pain in the ass’ in all the official memos.” She gives me a smile. “So you can see why I’m confused.”  
  
“Not really.” I pause. “How did you get in?”  
  
“Would I be known as spygirl if I revealed all my secrets?”   
  
“No, but you’d still be a pain in the ass.”  
  
She smiles again. “Can I come in? Or should I go back out into the scary blizzard?”  
  
“Come in,” I sigh. Snow sparkles on her coat like a shawl of diamonds. She is moon-encrusted, shimmery, fresh. I feel suddenly very old and take her coat from her, watching as she shakes like an animal to remove the snow from her hair. “Do you want a drink?”  
  
“What have you got?”  
  
“Tea. Red wine.”  
  
“So the first option wasn’t even really an option.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Veronica walks over to the window seat and curls up amidst the wavelets of paper and books. “Wine it is. How did you get it? Extortion? Robbery?”  
  
“My friend sent it from Malta. Apparently they still do the grape-growing thing there.” Pulling open the bottom drawer of my desk, I remove one of the bottles and pop the cork, smelling the wild fruit and the alcohol. All I have are two earthenware jars, but they do the job well enough. I hand one to Veronica.   
  
She takes a long drink. “Do the locals make it? Or do demons just like red stuff in general?”  
  
I shake my head. “Reedy’s Bazaar sells it out there. Vines, hot weather, open spaces. Easy access. Spike says they make a lot of money from all the bootlegged liquor.”  
  
“Spike is my new best friend.”  
  
“Good luck.” Familiar bumps against my knee. She lies down at the foot of the desk chair, at my feet, as if to provide protection. Veronica tracked in snow and the wolf’s fur is wet with it. She smells good. “Spike can be hard to get to know. Prickly.”  
  
“Prickly people are my specialty.” Leaning back against the glass, she pushes back her hair with her free hand. It is sharply layered, still that shade of tearful blonde that I remember from months ago. “See how we’re being pleasant? Talking? Even though I’m really, really cranky right now?”   
  
“We are going to find out what happened to him.”  
  
“And you think you can do that without including me?”  
  
I shrug. “Yes.”  
  
Veronica sips her wine. Her lips darken, flush. “Tell me about the Samael.”  
  
I’m thrown off guard for a second. But only a second. “You tell me. You work for them.”  
  
“Vicious rumour. Tell me. I need to know what we’re up against. I’m used to corporations and seedy lawyers and action heroes. I need a feel for what you do.”   
  
“ _We_ aren’t up against anything. You can’t handle this. Battling demons isn’t about – you have to understand – physical strength aside, it’s too hard. It has to be your _life_.”  
  
“I don’t have a life,” Veronica says flatly. “So that’s no problem-o.” She breathes out and stares straight into my eyes. Hers are bright, but nothing falls. They are dark, dry riverbeds. “I’ve spent the last three years looking for people. This won’t be any different. Except that you have information that I’ve never had. Names, faces, pictures, facts. Like _that_.” She points to a large sketch pinned on the wall. “What is that?”  
  
I look but don’t really have to. It is a sketch that Willow sent to me almost two and a half years ago, before she vanished. Maybe it was one of the last sights she saw on this earth. Done in dark chalk, the drawing is of a thing – Giles tells me it is an archangel. A dog’s legs, a serpent’s body, hag-like lion’s face, with a tail like a bull whip and black stuff coming from its mouth.   
  
“A legend,” I reply. “What legend says is the leader of the Samael. What _is_ the Samael.”  
  
“Oh.” Veronica’s voice is small. “Is that what demons look like? I thought they were all like vampires—“  
  
“Vampires aren’t—you can’t really _see_ vampires. They live off of humans like a parasite. The demon and the human blood mix together and the demon keeps the human body. They get all tree-ringy in the face when they smell or taste blood, but otherwise—very wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  
  
“So that is what?”  
  
“A pure demon. Giles calls them the ‘Old Ones’.” I’m beginning to feel sleepy from the wine and the pressure of being in her company. “They’ve been around too long. They’re angry. There’s nothing—human about them. That’s what we’re up against. Monsters. The Shedu are a whole other barrel of fun. They’re like—have you ever had candy from Korea?”  
  
“This?” Veronica points to her face, “means confused.”  
  
“It’s all chocolate-y and yummy on the outside but then you bite in and it tastes like—like, rice.”  
  
“I like rice pudding.”  
  
“I mean, it looks nice but there’s badness inside. The Shedu will attack all but the purest evil or the purest good. All those shades of grey? They’re toast. Usually they wouldn’t touch the Samael with a ten-foot pole, but they used to the run the world and power—“  
  
“Is a hard thing to give up,” Veronica finishes and sips her wine.   
  
“Right.” I sit back and close my eyes for a moment. “You can help. But don’t get in my way.”  
  
“Don’t get in mine.”  
  
I have to smile. But I see her watching my neck, where the silver chain glints against my skin. It’s a reminder. Standing, I step over Familiar and light some candles. A few fat, waxy stubs next to the vulva amulet. A long, thin taper that rests close to a picture of Willow and Xander. Some squat, green coloured candles set in glass jars that line the bookcases. Soon, the room is glowing and flickering in and out of light and darkness. Gusts of snow are illuminated briefly outside and then disappear. Her face and then not-her-face. I feel a little breathless and watch the cave of her mouth, the knobbiness of her elbows, her fingernails – ten little pink stones, the ripples of her hair, the whites of her eyes flashing in the dark, and the hollow at the base of her neck. A drop of frost or sweat has collected there and it is wet, pink from her flesh. My chest feels constricted again – a hot noose beneath my breastbone.   
  
“What’s the first step?” she asks me.  
  
“Canvassing. Asking questions. Hanging out in shady places.”  
  
Her teeth show as she smiles. “Can do. I grew up in Neptune.”  
  
“What was that like?”  
  
“Shady. With a Capital S.”  
  
“Good,” I say softly. “So you’ll be of help and not just—“  
  
“In the way?” Veronica rises and sets her jar down on the desk. “So I’ll meet you here tomorrow.”  
  
“Well—“  
  
“That wasn’t a question.”  
  
She gathers her coat and boots and leaves. A few moments later, I watch her walk down through the drifts, her hand in her pocket – probably grasping a stake – and her head down against the breathtaking wind. Her hair spills out from her hat, freezing on her shoulders and down her back. The noose tightens and for a moment, I have to reach my hand inside my pants, feel myself there. There is no one else on the street. The black buildings squeeze her in. I watch until she passes over the horizon.  
  
Moments later, the candles gutter and burn out. And the wolf sleeps on, at my feet.


	5. Chapter 5

I eat breakfast by myself in the windy kitchen. A pane broke on the far side of the room, by the leaking fridge, and it has been spilling snow and guttery smoke onto the floor all night. I patched it up with wood I found in the alley beside my building, and hammered nails until my palms were raw and sore. But the wind is still drifting through the cracks and it stirs my hair as I eat sliced apples and cold oats mixed with water. One of Spike’s old letters lies on the table beside the porcelain bowl that holds my breakfast. The piece of paper is so old that some of the words are smudged and almost illegible. But I can always read them. Spike speaks my language: the language of Sunnydale and memories and his letters hold the weight of everything that has gone past and been done.  
  
 _Pet,  
  
Has it only been one year since everything spun into madness? It seems like a bloody eternity, doesn’t it? I hope you’re surviving and that London isn’t too cold. I’ve moved on from Prague. I suppose I am in Slovakia, though I’m not quite certain whether they’ve changed the borders or not since it all went to Hell and back. I was chased here by the hordes, but while they’re scared of the Carpathians, I happen to like them. I’ve set up camp in the snowy foothills, and had a couple of travelers join me in the past week.  
  
In the mornings, I stand with one of the healers, and overlook Cachtice castle. And not even under a blanket. The sky never brightens here, and when it does, it is only with snow. There is not a lot to see, but I know you love whatever pieces of the earth that are left. I’ll try to be eloquent, a hard job if there ever was one. Actually, sod being elegant. Let me just tell you what I see. The woman, like I said, is a healer, and she has followed me to a few of these camps. Her hair is short, a dusty brown, and her eyes are pooly green, like algae. She has dirt smeared over her arms and she smells strange, like poultices and dew. I don’t know her name. She hands me cheese to eat sometimes, and bread. Some mornings, she cracks eggs over the fire, and the rest of them eat, while I search for dead birds still warm with blood.  
  
We stand, and I smoke, rolled cigarette after rolled cigarette. The paper is thin under my fingers. The healer says smoke is starting to wisp from beneath my skin, to curl around my clothes and wind from my scalp. I smoke too much. I read too much poetry. There is nothing else to do. And fortune favors the reader, for it seems that those who have been taken have been leaving behind scraps of verse for the travelers. I guess they want something to be left. Poor bastards.  
  
Cachtice was once bordered by research palaces but word amongst the locals is that the demons were driven out by the ghost of the countess who once ruled here. She is known as the ‘Bloody Lady of Cachtice’ – her name was Erzsébet Báthory. Might be a project for the Watcher if he can get off his arse in that drafty hall he lives in. Seems she was a vamp, and a lesbian at that, so you can imagine that a lot of serving wenches went missing. Reminds me a bit of Darla, who always had a taste for bloody pussy, and yet, and I never thought I would say this, Darla was a lamb compared to this bint. Legends say that over a thousand girls disappeared in her short reign as Countess. Three cheers to the bitch though, since she’s managed to scare the hordes off.   
  
What do I see: the sky is wettening and beginning to snow. The healer reaches for one of my cigarettes, but pulls back. She must have quit in her other life. The travelers are dots on the horizon behind me. The smoke tastes airless in my mouth, and all I can think of is pulsing, throbbing, sodding blood. The mountains burn here and there and the research palaces are rubble, stripped of paint and timber. It still smells of sulphur and that dry reek of human waste. Cachtice castle is a mess of stone, but there are well defined towers and borders, and it must have been a terrifying sight for those young girls brought here to die.  
  
I’ve asked about your friends. One of the travelers knew Xander at a camp outside of Bath. Would that be Bellerophon? Ask Giles. That was a few months ago now, and I’m sure he’s been moved since. He said that the boy was in good health and spirits, the only one who would joke or laugh, and that they took his eye patch away, so there is stitched angry flesh and not much else. I’ve heard nothing of the witches, the werewolf or the others. People ask after you, send their blessings, but I pretend that we haven’t spoken in years. There are those who remember Angel as well. I just stare; there is nothing to say.  
  
I saw Illyria two months ago in Prague, but did not linger. She was confused, dissatisfied, twitchy. I don’t think she is enjoying this war as much as she thought she might; Fred got in too deep, Wesley got in too deep, Angel got in too deep. She asked me what was done with Wesley’s body. I told her it was never found. She asked me what happened to Angel. I told her that he also, was never found. Seems funny, doesn’t it? All these ghosts. Sometimes I think I’m gonna choke on them.   
  
All the memories and feelings, all the smells and heartaches, they are spinning together, and I can no longer remember anything clearly. But there is one, and I think of it when I wank, late at night, beneath the moon – such a knackered moon, such a burnt out engine – and it is of the last time I saw you, in London, in that pub with the ceiling made of glass. I can still taste the lager in my mouth – Strongbow, wasn’t it? – and see the way the barman glanced at the door everytime it opened, fearful. I can remember your hair, spilling black over your shoulders – the ends were still running with dye, and your collarbones were dove-like, swan-like, and I imagined biting down, grinding bone against teeth, feeling the wet spurt. When we kissed outside, the stars were not yet tired, and you tasted of girl and I felt that damn locket, swaying and banging against my chest. I remember grabbing it, trying to wrench it from your neck and you kept a firm grip, whispering that I couldn’t understand, and I said that I bloody well understood – who was with him for hundreds of years? – and you started sobbing, great huge bubbling sobs, that rose and bell-like, formed in the air, and I took you back to your apartment and we fucked and listened to the doves roosting in the ceiling. The fucking was terrible, in the sense that I have never ceased craving it, like salt, and now here I am, another Byron, a mad poet, penning verse about your cunt, about your mourning hair, about your unformed teacup breasts. You were too thin, and you were not as strong anymore, the malnourishment and the defeat and the grief, but inside, you felt as sweet as an arrow, and I bit down on the knotted scars of your palm, tasted the ash and the blood of Sunnydale High, and when you came, slippery and sure, I licked at your blood, an animal.   
  
I’m maudlin in my age. Ignore me. Brave your resistance, keep that chin up and tell Jane that I’ll find him a Slovak bird for his collection. I’ll be in London in another few months, to drop off my reports and samples of the palaces. I’ll have a root around tomorrow and see what I can find.   
  
S  
  
PS: I found out this morning. The healer’s name is Tanis._  
  
I read the letter through and through, until my oats and apples are gone. Familiar is curled up at my feet, her fur warm and dry, despite the wind. I’m still shivering, and I get up to heat some water on the stove. The burner fires up after a few tries, licking blue flame around the edge of the outer ring. I set the old, stained kettle onto the heat and listen to it begin its seething.  
  
There’s a knock at the door and I’m startled, even though I knew she’d be arriving soon. I grab two mugs down from the cupboard above the oven, and pull my sweater closer around my body. Familiar growls softly, but I lift out a palm to her, shushing her with that movement. Not that I know whether or not she should be bristling – I think of a quote that Spike sent me once ( _O my enemy, do I terrify?_ ) and wonder if there is an enemy or a friend at the door. But when I open it, it is both. Veronica nods to me, bundled up, snow clinging to her ankles.  
  
“Hi,” I say awkwardly and remember smelling my fingers last night.  
  
“I stopped by Reedy’s,” she says and smiles, holding up a paper bag that is stained with something faintly orange and transparent. “Got us some buns.”  
  
“I just had breakfast.”  
  
“So what?” she pushes past me, but there is really no pushing, because she is small and faintly snake-like when she moves. Throwing the bag on the rickety kitchen table, she wrinkles her nose at Familiar. “Hi, puppy. Maybe you can eat Buffy’s bun, since she’s too full.”  
  
“I’m not too full,” I counter. “What is it?”  
  
“The buns are from Taiwan,” she says, shrugging off her coat. She doesn’t seem to notice the wind droning through the room, or the snow pouring in through whisper thin cracks in the wood. “Some guy is engineering them in his basement and selling them to Reedy. I’m surprised he isn’t vamp food yet. The meat’s local. Nice and greasy. I figured we could use it. It’s snowing like a bitch outside.”  
  
“Color me stunned,” I say, and as the kettle boils, I raise it off the burner. “Aren’t you cold?”  
  
She makes a noise. She is wearing a thin, grey sweater that wraps around her skinniness like second flesh. No bra. Her breasts are small, but delicate, and her nipples are hard – big, surprisingly big. My face prickles. I can’t help but see it in my mind. Tugging up the sweater and searing her nipples with the weight of my tongue, sucking hard until she couldn’t-- _breathe_. I feel almost sick with it, and fill the mugs with the boiling water and the tea leaves, watching them settle at the bottom. I don’t have a bodem, so I can’t strain it. We’ll get the leaves caught between our teeth, but it is a small price to pay for real, live tea. I reach down and open the fridge door.  
  
“Your fridge is leaking,” she says helpfully.  
  
I ignore her for a moment. “Thanks, Captain Obvious.” I sound like Xander. Or maybe Spike. Sliding things out of the way, I lift out the jar of black cherries and slowly, carefully spoon them into the mugs of tea. They will make the liquid thick and pulpy, the way we like it. Nourishment on a starved earth. “Sorry.”  
  
She laughs, just barely. “Apology? Can that be what I just heard?”  
  
“I can apologise.”  
  
“My memory isn’t _that_ fuzzy.”  
  
Setting the tea down in front of her, I sit down on the opposite chair, grateful for Familiar. She settles down against my feet, smushing my toes but providing welcome relief. I can concentrate on that, instead of on the material of Veronica’s leggings, of her high black boots, that hug the curves behind her knees. I sip my tea, watch as she does the same. She looks down at Spike’s letter.  
  
“Your boyfriend?”  
  
I snort. “He wishes. Just—an informant.”  
  
“Tipsters don’t write letters that long.”  
  
“I knew him in Sunnydale.”  
  
“Which one is he? Dark and broody or light and crazy?”  
  
“He wasn’t crazy,” I say before I can stop myself.  
  
“Ahhh, the one who’s doing the Billy Idol impression. I met him, remember?”  
  
“Not really,” I lie, wishing that it wasn’t a lie. Spike could smell it all over us. Desire. Thick as taffy and just as sticky, or so he said later, as he was finger fucking me in the stairwell outside the pub. Veronica had gone home. He teased me. _I always knew you could swing both ways. Ever since Faith, I knew. Wet bitch._ He made me taste his fingers. Sea salt. _And she’s got what you have. A fire in your gut._ “But that’s an old letter. Old, old. Like, Paleolithic and wooly mammoths.”  
  
“I don’t think those two necessarily go together,” she says absently, touching the letter. “Where is he now?”  
  
“Classified.”  
  
“Think I’ll sell it to the highest bidder?”  
  
“That’s the rumour,” I stare directly at her, but her gaze doesn’t fall or waver. “Did the grapevine get it wrong?”  
  
“Slightly,” she says, irritated. The tea is burning her lips. They are red and chapped, but she hasn’t flinched. “I’m just trying to find my Dad. I didn’t know that was a crime, Angela Lansbury. Your detective skills suck by the way.”  
  
“I know you’re trying to find your Dad. I get that its big stuff and you’ve had to deal with big badness. But you can’t—look, this is a really different world than Neptune. I know you think you’ve seen your share of sleaze—but this is—I’ve had to deal with this on a small scale since I was sixteen. And now? It’s bigger than even I can—I mean, I just haven’t been able to _stop_ it. Even with my fancy office and assistant. I stopped everything else. Sacrifices were enough back then. Now, there just isn’t anything—when Angel did what he did, when the dragon ripped apart everything—I couldn’t _contain_ it—and then Cleveland fell and –“ I take a breath. “I wasn’t there. I was in Rome. The Shedu took over and the Samael nipped at their heels. I couldn’t—I don’t even know if I could’ve stopped what happened. That’s been hard for me. There’s been bad--- Glory, The Master, Willow—but this. The world is—there’s a new reality. It’s just not going to be easy.”  
  
“That was a speech.”  
  
“Sorry. Habit.”  
  
“I liked it.”  
  
“I want you to know what you’re up against. It’s not Aaron Echolls. It’s Aaron Echolls times a billion. With super powers.”  
  
“And probably with better hair.”  
  
I swallow. “Logan has to be dead. You get that, right? There’s getting of that?”  
  
“No. I don’t get that. No getting. Explain it to me.”  
  
I listen to the echoes. _I’m talking about watching my lover die._ “His plane crashed—“  
  
“How do you know it crashed?”  
  
“Well where is it then? Show me on a map.”  
  
“I can’t—I don’t know. On an island? Maybe he’s sipping moijtos at Club Med.”  
  
“Veronica.” I let the name sit and stir the air for a moment. “He was four miles up, and the ocean is six miles deep. I want to _do_ something—but how and why are you so sure that he’s alive?”  
  
“Because I’d feel it if he wasn’t,” she says, looking embarrassed by the sentiment. “We’ve been friends for too long for me not to know. It was the same with Lilly. It was this—I _felt_ it. She said, ‘Oh’ as she died. I know she did. She was surprised. She didn’t expect anything to—conquer her. She said, ‘oh, oh OH’—like sex or something. Escalating.” Veronica flushes, looks down at her tea. “She felt the damp blood and she cracked her skull against the cement. It popped like Rice Krispies. _That_ is what I know. I felt it because we were like sisters.”  
  
“You’re not Logan’s sister.”  
  
“Worse. I’m his best friend.” She takes her bun out of the paper bag and opens it, inspecting for roaches. Not that Reedy is bad for that, but you never know. Satisfied, she takes a bite. Grease shines her mouth. I lick my own. “He does this jackass thing—he disappears constantly.”  
  
“Where does he go?”  
  
“If I knew that, I’d be there right now,” Veronica sneers a little bit, and drifts into silence, but sharply, like a cut. She sits, eating without noise, her tongue swiping over her lips, catching any crumbs. She watches me.   
  
I feel everything. The scrape of my sweater against my nipples. The hard wood of the chair against my ass, making it throb slightly. Warm wet fur against my ankles. The ribbons of wind. The hot mug against my palms. Slippery tea in my mouth. I watch her, as she watches me. I watch her eat, and watch the meat and watch the bread. Her fingers glow white and her nipples are still hard, and I wonder if she didn’t wear a bra on purpose. It embarrasses me, this violent – longing for a -- _girl_ but it doesn’t stop just because I’ve acknowledged it and Spike was right, really—ever since Faith, ever since that first peek into another flesh, another world. For one single breath I let myself imagine the taste of her between her legs, and saliva rushes my mouth and I see myself—beneath the table, ravenous, plowing tongue—like Lilly’s conqueror—  
  
“We should go. Canvas. Talk to the baddies.”  
  
I look up. She knows. But ever since that first time—that disaster—she has waited. And so, I disappoint her. I nod, agreeing, seeing my bedroom in my mind’s eye, the doves waiting patiently, the sheets ready, warm, and I leave it all behind, the locket heavy and reassuring, and as I walk toward the door, feel her fingers skitter and bump down my hip, reminding me. What desire is.   
  
Her voice is low, taut as an electrical wire during a storm. “So, who should we beat up first?”


	6. Chapter 6

“So this is how it goes,” Veronica says, apropos to nothing, as she kicks snow with her feet, kicking until her black boots are wet and shiny, and little wavelets of snow rise into the air, falling against the sky, falling against my feet.   
  
We walk in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. It is unlike it was, though I’ve never seen it as it was. Most of the buildings were flattened by the storms, or destroyed by the weakening of the veils between the worlds. There is a perfect dragon-shaped hole in the rooftop of one of the restaurants. It used to serve Makhani Chicken and Basmati rice, so the locals have told me, and smells good, like curry and vinegary fries. Spike hung out in the Circus for a while after he left Los Angeles. It’s always been a hideout, a congregating hot spot for the travelers, and he wrote to me, his words frightened. He said it was a badland of burnt houses and burnt people. He said that they needed help.  
  
So I came.  
  
I eat my bun and think about how to answer Veronica, but really, there isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been covered. How _what_ goes, I should shout, _what_ are you even talking about? but that would be bitchy, and really, I know she’s just nervous, and so am I, we’re two nervous girls, and so I just continue to eat my bread and meat, feeling it fill me belly deep. I peed before we left, but now I feel like I have to go again. That tickly feeling, and my period isn’t quite over yet.   
  
“Who are we talking to first?” Veronica asks quietly. Her voice is almost lost in the whip of the wind and the smell of the sulphur that reeks up from gutters and ditches. “Logan only came to London twice and he hated it– he wouldn’t go outside. I can’t think of anyone he’d know–“  
  
“They’ll know him. He’s the poster boy. Why did he hate it? I mean, I know it’s not Disneyland but–“  
  
“He hated Disneyland too,” she says fondly, and stares off into the middle distance. She pauses. “He didn’t like bridges. He didn’t like anywhere, really, after everything happened. He was a baby about it. That’s why he started flying – I guess to stop it from getting worse.”  
  
“Nothing can stop that,” I say and finish my bun with one last swallow. Leaning down, I wipe my hands in the snow. It is cool, powdery, and I leave orange stains behind. The Circus is a few blocks away. “Any– any news on your Dad lately?”  
  
“No. Remember how no news used to mean good news? I mean, it’d be like, ‘yay the plane didn’t crash!’ and stuff, because if it wasn’t on CNN, it didn’t happen. God, CNN, remember CNN? And me– I could hack into anything, press a few buttons and I was there, in, up to my neck in it. I used to have such a menagerie of people– a network of info. I thought I was so in the know.” She laughs bitterly. “Now I can barely pay people to talk to me, to give me a crumb of _anything_. The last I heard was what Logan beat out of a guy in the Maldives. Logan said he was gross– kinda retro– he wore a vial of blood around his neck. I mean, how Angelina Jolie circa Billy Bob Thornton can you _get_? And the guy said my Dad was probably underground, but he didn’t mean dead– so yeah, not really a help.”  
  
“Is Logan the ex you talked about from college?”  
  
“I don’t know. What was the context?” She sees my look. “I didn’t get taught at the nunnery, Buffy. I had a few boyfriends. I was probably talking about Piz. I dated him for a bit after Logan. A re-boundy thing.”  
  
“What happened to him?”  
  
“He died pretty fast.” She is expressionless. “Typical. He always excelled at everything. Even dying. He just– wasn’t much of a trooper. There was no fight left in him. Anyway, we were already broken up. I was stupid enough to cheat on him with Logan and well– so it goes.”  
  
“So you and Logan are–“  
  
“Noooo,” she sighs out, almost like a lament. “We are best friends. Compadres. Amigas. I had to put him in the Wallace or Weevil category or else I never would’ve got any work done. He needs constant attention. Like a plant. And I kill plants. I never have enough water or– umm, plant food.”  
  
“Plants,” I repeat.  
  
“Plants,” she agrees. “I see that Giles is putting together an encyclopedia.”  
  
I taste surprise in my mouth and stop, staring at the back of her head, at her hair the colour of frozen tears. “How do you _see_ that?”  
  
She shrugs. “I read the papers on your kitchen table.” She holds up her hands. “They were out. Lying there. All sexy and exposed. Sorry, it’s the PI in me.”  
  
“You read–“ I breathe out and try not to let my anger travel down, into my fists or my legs. I wrap my arms around my body and stare up at the sky, feeling the snowflakes against my eyelashes, nose, lips, chin. “What gives you the right–“  
  
“Nothing. Everything. History. So tell me. Why is he doing that?”  
  
“Why do you think?”  
  
“So that our children will remember.” She says soft, and takes something from her pocket, a sheaf of papers. I realize they are from my table and almost charge forward to snap them from her hands. But I remain still, fast becoming covered in snow and sleet. The inside of my mouth feels vast, wide, a cold sea. “This part– who was Wesley Wyndham-Pryce?”  
  
The name hurts the air. “He was one of Angel’s team. A Watcher. Ex–Watcher. He died when Los Angeles fell.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“‘Los Angeles fell’,” she repeats. “It sounds too much like poetry. It doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
“Maybe not. I don’t know what it means. It’s something that Giles says. I just repeat it. What really happened was that there wasn’t a band aid big enough to cover the ouchie that ripped a hole in LA’s atmosphere.” I’m breathing a little quickly, and I stare at the papers in her hands, at the names. “Angel died trying to fight it off– so did Wesley.”  
  
“I thought their bodies were never-“  
  
“Angel didn’t have a body. He would’ve been dust. He got eaten up by a dragon,” I say, still not moving. She is stamping her feet, trying to stay warm. “And then the snow world above us slipped through the cracks and bang, free winter all around. That’s the one they haven’t been able to stitch up.”  
  
“Snedronningen,” she says.   
  
“Splainy?”  
  
“That’s what they call it–“  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Giles kind of people. Its from a fairytale. Hans Christen Andersen, duh.” She is mocking herself with her tone, mocking valley girl speak. But there is a little bit of bite in it. Basically, like _wake up, Buffy_. “The Snow Queen? Snow bees? That’s what happened to the world, according to kids I run into. It got stung by a snow bee and puffed up.”  
  
I ignore her a bit. “Well Giles and his kind of people are putting together an encyclopedia so people won’t forget what we’ve done– it’s not like regular wars.”  
  
“Will Logan be in it?”   
  
I bite my lip. “If he dies.”  
  
"Am I in it?"  
  
"Why would you be?"  
  
She reads from the page, as if it is a retort. “Buffy Anne Summers, the Slayer. Homebase: what remains of London, England. Born in California. Battled the spawn of the Sunnydale Hellmouth for much of her tenure as the Chosen One. Family: Dawn Summers, sister, who lives in Soho, Manhattan, teaching Potential Slayers the tools of battle. The Slayer has never been married. Past relationships include souled vampire Angel and the infamous William the Bloody. Buffy spent the first days of the wars in Cleveland, where she successfully closed the Hellmouth there, before moving on to Los Angeles. Though she could not save Angel (see his entry for further details), the Slayer killed the dragon and brought mercy to the city. After only a short time, the Slayer moved to London to set up one sector of the Resistance and recently has found herself running the entire operation. With agents set up far and wide across the fragile earth, she unwillingly remains safe and central in her London office with her assistant Jane Waterstone. A hero for her time, and the only bright beacon left in an increasingly cold and unforgiving war, Buffy cannot die, for without her, there is no hope left.” Veronica pauses and raises one perfect blond eyebrow. “Lots of pressure. And only two fuck buddies? Harsh.”  
  
“It’s a rough draft,” I say snottily, and finally continue walking, passing her and cutting through a back alley. Nearby is the pub with the ceiling made of glass, where I take Spike when he comes to town. She catches up with me, stuffing the papers back in her pocket and giving me a wary glance. “Besides,” I say, “I’m making Giles take that out. Too embarrassing,” I pause, considering. “I’m starting to think he’s been alone for too long.”  
  
“Where’s he living now?”  
  
“Still in the country.”  
  
"Still in Wales?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Why what?"  
  
"Why the interrogation?"  
  
"I'm interested," she says, her voice quiet, blurry. It does not sound like her. She brings out the papers again. "Are your friends in here?"  
  
"No," I say shortly. "Their stories aren't finished yet."  
  
++++  
  
We sit in the last pub, many hours later, drinking lukewarm, grainy tea. The pub is not called anything, since names were soon lost in the chaos of the war. There is an unspoken rule: they will feed you as best they can, water you like a horse, but you must never tell they are there. They hide the smoke from their ovens and they hide their coffee smell, because it would be death if the demons found out. They hate any mutterings of normal life, however small they might be. The cups we drink from are made from plaster, molded by hand. The barman didn't know Logan, hadn't heard of him. No one has, not even a whisper. It is as if he was wiped from the earth by long strong hands. The pub is set far back from the street, and there is a dog by the door. He can smell demon coming a mile away. Every few minutes he growls, snuffles in his sleep and then rolls over.   
  
The air is hot, a little too hot, and smells of burnt bacon and bushels of wheat, corn. Veronica has taken off her coat and shaken out her hair, so it lies across her shoulders, heaps of blonde curling over her small breasts. She sips her tea, watches the room, the pinch of defeat evident in her mouth. I watch her, and wonder what would be so horrible in the act of kissing her, of tasting the briny heat between her skinny legs, of losing everything between the dove-white sheets of my bed.   
  
The answer of course is that there would be nothing horrible in it, nothing at all. The horror would follow, of course, nipping at heels -- clawing at them, until acknowledged.   
  
She would claw at my shoulders.  
  
"How can no one know anything?" she finally says.   
  
"Huh?" I flush a bit, just beneath my hairline, warm and damp.   
  
"Pay attention, Sherlock," she says slowly, affectionately. "Someone has to know something. People don't vanish."  
  
"Actually they do."  
  
"Not in my experience. Someone always has dirty hands."  
  
There is a fluttering in the pocket of my jeans. As if an unseen hand slipped something between the layers of material. I reach down, root. That part of my leg feels hot. Veronica is watching me.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Jane sent me a letter.”  
  
She shrugs, points to herself. “Not understanding.”  
  
“It’s magic. Well, I basically got it from Magic for Dummies.”  
  
“There’s a Magic for Dummies?” she asks, rubbing her hands together. “Oooh, how do I get my hands on a copy? Better yet, do they have ‘Vampirism for Dummies Volume Two: So you wanna bite some necks?”  
  
I laugh unwillingly. So few people can make me laugh. “It’s like teleportation – he imagines it in my pocket, and so it’s there. It’s how I communicate with everybody. Will would say it’s easy.” A quick sharp pain against my breastbone and I swallow. “Want me to read it out loud?”  
  
“Sure,” Veronica answers, biting her lower lip.  
  
“ _Hello, my lovely girl,  
  
Please tell me you’ve gotten laid since I left._” My mouth makes one of the little embarrassed o’s that it hasn’t made in ages. But I go on, steadfastly ignoring that that ever, ever happened. “ _If you haven’t, boo to you, and boo to me too, since there are so many fuckable men on this train and I haven’t made a single move toward having one of them on their knees. Perhaps I’m too worried that one of them will have a razor between his teeth? As Tori Amos says, I would be foolishly unarmed to believe otherwise.  
  
Have you fed the pigeons? I already know you haven’t, so rush on over and do that whenever you get a chance. Just wanted to send you a quick word that everything is proceeding on schedule. We’re almost at Belfast and I haven’t died. Everything is snow, everything is white valleys. The air on the train is like breathable ice, and I’ve remained snuggled in the blankets you packed (just like a pathetic housewife, you are) and slept most of the way.  
  
Missing the walk home, missing you, impossible prickly bitch.  
Love as always and ever,  
J_”  
  
Veronica smirks a bit. “He’s like Judy Garland, isn’t he? With horns.”  
  
I look at the heart her mouth makes. "Do you still live in the same place?"  
  
The heart snaps shut. "Yes. It's not exactly a booming market at the moment."  
  
Spike constantly sent me little snippets from Sappho after he met Veronica. _and desire eats away at your heart_. Or his last offering. _the wet skirt of a salt girl to her body_. But that was Japanese, wasn’t it? Not Sappho at all. I struggle to concentrate, to remember what we are talking about. Thinking of her apartment, I call up images of it. Easy to access, not really safe, fourth floor on Winchester Avenue, deep in the teeming heart of the city. Big wide windows that she taped shut with thick big stretches of tarp. A voluminous porcelain tub set on tiny claw feet. Cracked bowls and cutlery. The table where we once brainstormed about her Dad, and ate bread that we dipped in the last of Jane's Balsamic vinegar. Her lips were slick. Mine were wetted from my own salvia, and it was just embarrassing -- it was just like when Angel used to smell my periods, or when Spike could feel me through solid oak. I could _smell_ it on us, just as I can now. She's remembering and so am I, and its terrible, really.   
  
"Can we go back to your place for a bit? We could have some of that black market wine. Talk some more?" she asks. Quickly, "about Logan, I mean."  
  
"Yes," I say, unyielding and yet yielding, as desire eats away at my heart.


	7. Chapter 7

Veronica sits on my living room floor, goose bumps prickled along her thin arms. The draft from the kitchen still colours the room like smoke, and though the fire is burning like a burning thing, it hasn’t warmed up enough to rid the chill from my skin. Papers rest on Veronica’s lap and Familiar lies at her feet, crouched up against her knees. A clay mug of wine sits next to her hip and every few moments, she raises it to her mouth, drinking deep. It is a briny wine; tastes salted. Spike wrote to me when he sent it, saying that months before, a huge wave had enveloped the vines, and when it receded, the grapes had seemed harvested by mermaids. I watch Veronica, mute and unmoving, remembering a time before, when we were sitting like this, in front of my fire, looking for her Father.  
  
I was trying to find something that I could _do_ and she was thisclose to breaking into tiny pieces, her body shuddering, as if it was being repeatedly banged up against a seawall. Flotsam and jetsam, but _so_ unDisney. She made pasta – there was still pasta then, not exactly Ravioli- but still, pasta with carbs. There wasn’t any sauce, so we poured vinegar over it and it had tasted terribly, horribly, of Angel’s tears. I ate my whole plate, conscious not to vomit, conscious to lick every drop up.  
  
Memories, after all, are the only company we keep.  
  
“Find anything?” I ask her.  
  
“Shockingly, no.”  
  
We both fall silent. She has piled all of her hair on top of her head, and is slightly drunk and teetery. Shifting so that she can lay flat on her belly, she continues sifting through the various notes I’ve made on the hot topic of Logan’s disappearing act. As she gets tipsier, she starts to snort, sniff, or downright scoff at some of the comments in the margins. I’m beginning to get irritated and take another drink from my mug. Soon I’ll probably be morphing into cave-Buffy and bashing her head in with a club. Wine = bad.  
  
“Do you want something to eat?” I ask.  
  
She looks up, interested. “What do you have?”  
  
“Jane left some things here—cheese, apples.”  
  
“I feel like a horse. Can’t hack another apple.”  
  
I say nothing, and she looks awkward.  
  
“Sooo…” she begins, “heard from Dawn lately?”  
  
“When I call her.”  
  
“Kids today,” she says dryly, mocking our adulthood. “Is she still with that girl?”  
  
“Which one?”  
  
“The baby lesbian. What was she, 16?”  
  
“17. The Potential. I remember—“ I squirm, a little uncomfortable. “I think Dawn was just the starter. She moved on to the entrée a few months ago. Dawn’s just—busy with work. I like to think that. Anything else is just gross.”  
  
“At least she’s not lonely,” Veronica says, soft.  
  
We stare at each other for a moment, and I feel the weight in my chest, like a dark bell. A glow spreads through the left pocket of my jeans, and I’m ashamed at how relieved I am. Awkwardness averted. “It’s a letter,” I say, fishing it out. A few sheets of paper, each scrawled with very familiar writing. Blobs of ink smear beneath my fingers. He sent it this right after he finished. “From Giles.”  
  
“Read it,” Veronica says.  
  
I obey, conscious that once again, there are no secrets between us. But I feel unable to stop it.  
  
_Buffy,_  
  
_How are you faring? I hope well. Did you receive the advance draft of the encyclopedia? Though it is not nearly complete, I wanted to share its progress with you in the hopes that your knowledge and insights could help to improve the dry tone and style. In addition, I am foggy on some details from the very beginnings of the battle. Though I know that the armies failed to keep back the dragons and hellhounds and while I realize that a hole punctured in the veil above us, allowing Snedronningen to empty into earth, I am still confused as to the exact nature of the fight: for instance, who participated in the first trial? How did the Shedu become involved? When did you arrive? When you got the call in Cleveland, as far as I know you traveled straight to Los Angeles, but I hear that you may have made a stop first. Also, though I know it may be painful for you, I must ask how exactly Angel died. Popular legend of course is that he was swallowed into the mouth of the dragon. But I must contest this belief, as I have never heard it confirmed by you. Are you absolutely certain that he was not taken by the Shedu or the Samael Are you sure that he did not orchestrate his own disappearance?_  
  
_I know that you, above all, would pray for his safety. But I also know that you were quick to judge him dead and gone, and perhaps this stems from your experiences in the past. You were wounded so many times that you seem to want to believe the worst from the outset – a kind of armor? Please, do not be hasty. Angel is a beacon of hope to many who were helped by him in Los Angeles. See if Spike can do some digging (has he heard any more of the Dark Maiden or the Bloodlings? They interest me) or send Jane on an information hunt. If you tell me that you saw Angel take his last breath, with your very own eyes, then I will believe you, as I always have done. But if you did not see it, Buffy, please tell me so that we may begin a formal investigation. I would – funnily enough, hate to think of Angel lost somewhere, without help – when we could do something to rescue him._  
  
_On the mystery of Logan Echolls, I know only a little. Colleagues in the east have warned me that he may have been taken to a camp in Marrakesh. This is only supposition, but I will magic over some materials for you to look through in this regard. Many are spreading the rumour that he may have been attempting to defect. It is widely known that he was not happy with the ‘politics’ of the military and that he had been disenchanted since the disaster of the Caspian Wars. Others are saying that he did not set foot on a plane that day and that he may have left with his local girlfriend. It is all hearsay. But, as always, there may be some truth to the gossip._  
  
_I have found a rather troubling trend in my research. A vast number of vanishings in the region of the Challenger Deep over the past few years. I have sent over details. It may be worth checking into. Could you mobilize Dawn and the Potentials if needs be? If not, let me know and I will organize a mission for you – if you think it is necessary._  
  
_Wales is frozen, a shell. Someday you will have to come and stay in this old house. By then, we will have triumphed and the air will be sweet with springtime. Maybe you will have a few children, or perhaps I will. We can drink tea on the porch and speak of inconsequential things. There will be no war or death, only light and promise. Someday, Buffy, I do believe in this—I do believe. The world can be what it was meant to be._  
  
_With love,_  
 _Giles_  
  
We are silent for a few minutes. I feel slightly drunk from the wine and close to tears. Veronica is the first to speak.  
  
“Do you think its right? That Angel might be alive?”  
  
“He was dead already,” I say.  
  
She rolls her eyes. “Are you ever going to take off that locket? Don’t you think it’s a little... Victorian?”  
  
“Funny.” I close my eyes. I bought it at Reedy’s Bazaar not long after Los Angeles burnt up. It was snowing, still a novelty, so I was bundled up and sort of enjoying it, daydreaming about snow angels and snowmen. My nose was red and my hair was still blond. I wasn’t even that skinny – my bones didn’t rub together. Still, I was almost dizzy with grief. I saw it from a distance, a heavy silver chain and a silver disc, chipped with opals and engraved with the wings of a bird. I asked the man running the stall what it was.  
  
“A mourning locket.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You put their hair in it. The dead person. It’s so you don’t forget.”  
  
“How could I?” I asked him, very seriously.  
  
“I don’t know, Slayer,” he said. “He was a hard one to follow.”  
  
By then, everyone knew of our love story. I was still surprised, though and I bought it quickly, anxious to get away from the slipperiness of pity and sadness. The morning was sharply cold and the locket burned the skin over my heart. I didn’t have his hair, but it still resonated throughout my body. It was like the weight of his body, the tang of sperm, and his little spied smile.  
  
Veronica speaks suddenly. “Marrakesh it is.”  
  
“You want to start reading first?” I ask, my voice brittle.  
  
“We can do it together,” she says, soft but steely. “Come here.”  
  
I sit next to her, by the fire. Her knee touches mine, just one aching point of contact. Familiar snuffles in her sleep, a wolf noise. The papers begin to spread around us, like a fan, as if sent by ghosts.


End file.
